running 2 internal hard drives

Discussion in 'PC hardware help' started by dragnandy, Nov 13, 2007.

  1. dragnandy

    dragnandy Regular member

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    can i run two internal hard drives at once? like they both have an OS on it but can i like use one as the main hard drive and use the other internal hard drive as an external and just connect it with like a SATA cord? or how would i do this?
     
  2. RottenKid

    RottenKid Member

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    You can do many things

    1) drive one can a OS, drive 2 can run another os, and you would configur them for dual boot: IE: install XP on D1 and then install vista on D2, there is a new utility so you dont have to do it in that order.

    2) If your using an e-sata, the pc doesnt know its external, because the e-sata port in the back of the pc, is just connected to the sata port on your motherboard.

    3) Raids - (hardware raid - OS raid sux) requires raid capable motherboard or sata or ide pci raid card. raid 0 is configured for max performance both drive become 1 as seen by the OS - some of the data is written to D1 and some to D2, but if one drive dies bye by to your data.

    Raid 1 - mirror raid - slower wirte, but same read. the drives mirror eachother so if one dies your data is on the other drive.

    4) use one drive as OS and store data, and the other as the same data as a backup, in the small personal IT world I see this alot.

    If your doing any of this try to have the same style drive, both sata or ide. I had XP on a SCSI, and vista on a sata, and since vista couldnt see the scsi adapter (older i guess), vista didnt configure dual boot, so i had to go into the bios and switch the boot every time i wanted to go to the other OS, it was awful

    DID this solve any problem or clear anything up.....
    Raid is fun, you would beleive what you learn from doing.

    PS with more drive you can run raid raid 5 which is kinda cool.
    honstly to learn more about raid, I just went to wikipedia.
     

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